Thursday, January 19, 2023

Rockville Regal Cinemas to close


Rockville Regal Cinemas
will close as part of the bankruptcy restructuring of Regal parent company Cineworld, Variety reports. A closing date has not been announced, but the company said in a bankruptcy filing that it will begin to reject leases for the closing theaters on February 15, 2023. This will be another economic cannonball to the gut for the struggling Rockville Town Center area, where the Rockville Town Square development has many vacant storefronts. 


Parking continues to be an issue, but the theater closure will eliminate a significant amount of foot traffic on evenings and weekends. A study last decade showed that a cineplex can draw 20,000 additional people to an urban center per weekend than an area without a multi-screen theater might attract.



17 comments:

  1. Bummer. Hopefully AMC can step in, though they're not doing hot either (market cap down 90%+ from its recent highs). It's just not a profitable business model anymore, unfortunately.

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  2. Parking down there was always the issue for me.

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  3. Another disaster on the periphery of RTS. Amazing the CE and County Council even reports to work literally with the County seat in economic free fall week to week. To say nothing of crime skyrocketing in every district of MoCo. Elrich says it’s all an illusion. The FBI Director says otherwise.

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    1. This is the typical waaay off topic comment these days from those who no absolutely nothing about the subject at hand. The entire movie theater industry is in a downward spiral, post pandemic, and here some babbler wants to blame local government, and crime as the fault. Maybe you should have stayed in school long enough to learn something useful.

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  4. Sadly, this is what you get with radical leftists running the County and a Stalinist winning in a suspicious 32 vote primary victory. Corporate flight first. Free fall public schools. Check. Corrupt public officials that are party first, rule of law second. Moco checks that box too. It won’t improve til the drug addled Boomers leave Earth (politically rambunctious types that have brought the County to this precipice) but in the next decade …

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    1. This has literally nothing to do with local politics. At all.

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  5. @ 12:10 AM (LOL) - AMC closed 39 theaters, not just this one - including theaters in downtown Washington DC and in Bowie.

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    1. Spot on! Thank you for knowing the real cause.

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  6. Not paying for parking. Simple as that.


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    1. Parking is $2 from the apartment complex parking across which Regal Rockville validates. I'm sorry, $2 hurting your pocket with your date?

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  7. Imagine being so insane you blame Cineworld going bankrupt on Stalin and the Montgomery County Council.

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  8. Imagine not being able understand the main thrust of the article which is “another” economic gut punch to RTS, not “one” national cinema closing. Symptomatic of decline; more shuttered buildings in the area. Two more solid restaurants failed there too(Amici Mei and Woodside Deli). Clueless poster.

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  9. Norm: Go walk around there and see for yourself. It’s another domino that is falling in the County business and legislative district. Your writing skills leave a lot to be desired as well, so I would be careful about hurling insults. Gordon Biersch was the primary tenant within eyeshot of Regal and nothing has replaced it in years. It was the anchor tenant for RTS. Guess where you don’t see theaters, restaurants and retailers shuttering? Reston Town Center. Typical lefty, pretend they know better and try to label those that do and have facts, analysis and a well balanced education to prove the point. It’s a shame that RTS and that whole area is in free fall. It was built in 2006 and is on its way to becoming the White Elephant Rockville Mall is now. What do we have in common? Poor leadership, no economic vision and others supporting the self licking ice cream cone that is one party rule. It’s a symptom of greater economic decay.

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  10. Regal has been the coolest theater if not the top #1 as AMC. I hate to see it shut down. So many movies I want to see more in that theater and I'm not ready to say goodbye. We already lost a cinema in Olney years ago and it converted into a Harris Teeter. An empty theater will be as empty as my heart and soul. So I thank you, Regal, for the memories of movie magic.

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  11. Good riddance!!! I worked there as a manager for nearly a decade, through robberies, multiple burst sewer pipes and leaks, including in the kitchen ceiling, fellow managers forging employee signatures, unsafe food handling, and violence from employees and coworkers for trying to do the right thing. I sent an employee home for threatening to kill me in front of coworkers and they want to write me up for saying I would call the police if they didn't leave. It was a horrible, horrible place!

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    1. I am sad you said that because everyone who deal with as consumers at the Rockville Regal theater made it a magical time for us. Everyone. So perhaps you had a disgruntled experience. But I truly believe for all the supposed flaws you mentioned, everyone we knew who worked there were keen to make it a great experience. It's these young people who work there sometimes that would care less about a moviegoing experience that would sometimes spoil the fun. But that's a mad sized Sometimes.

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  12. Really sad that this theater is closing. Even pre pandemic, movie goers forewent going to theaters because of streaming services at home. Regal then doubled down and made all of their theaters the most comfortable at an affordable price. Yet unfortunately, this happened. I also feel bad for Giuseppi's Pizza which is a typical primary stop of Regal Rockville moviegoers. I hope that Cineworld will reconsider. I'd rather they shut down Germantown Regal. It's one of the nastiest, least managed theaters on the I-270 corridor. Germantown is worth letting go.

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